Canada’s most adorned male Olympian, Andre De Grasse, will kick off his outside season on the Botswana Grand Prix Continental Tour Gold meet on April 12. De Grasse is about to race in his strongest occasion—the lads’s 200m—the place he’ll face defending Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo.
Star sprinters to headline the Botswana Golden Grand Prix! 🔥
Marie Josee Ta Lou-Smith, Leo Fabbri, Andre De Grasse, Wayde Van Niekerk, Letsile Tebogo, and Akani Simbine look set to headline the star-studded Botswana Golden Grand Prix on April twelfth! pic.twitter.com/Cptl3Eg9qy
— World Athletics Hub (@wldathleticshub) March 31, 2025
This marks De Grasse’s first 200m race since reaching the Olympic semi-finals final August in Paris. The final time he competed on the Botswana Grand Prix was in 2023, a season wherein he clocked 19.76 seconds and received a Diamond League title within the 200m occasion.
The 31-year-old from Markham, Ont., will face powerful competitors from Tebogo in addition to South Africa’s 400m world file holder, Wayde van Niekerk, who’s stepping down in distance.
Over the subsequent few months, De Grasse will give attention to attaining the 2025 World Championships entry commonplace of 20.16 seconds for the 200m. Whereas he has already certified for the lads’s 100m occasion on the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo this September, he has but to satisfy the qualification mark for the 200m.
Thus far in 2025, De Grasse has raced solely as soon as—a 60m indoor occasion in Kazakhstan in January, the place he recorded a time of 6.74 seconds in each the heats and the ultimate.
The seven-time Olympic medallist capped off his 2024 season on a excessive word, anchoring Canada to victory within the males’s 4x100m relay. This marked the nation’s first Olympic gold within the relay because the 1996 Atlanta Video games.
Tebogo enters the Botswana Grand Prix in nice kind, having clocked a powerful 45.29 seconds within the 400m on the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne final week. Like De Grasse, this shall be Tebogo’s first 200m race of the 2025 season.
You may watch or stream the occasion dwell from Canada on CBC Sports activities on the morning of Saturday, April 12.